The Role of the Community in the Implementation of the EPA's Rule on Risk Management Programs for Chemical Accidental Release Prevention

Abstract

Regulations under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) include requirements for preventing accidental chemical releases. Section 112(r) of the CAAA, the Accidental Release Provisions, requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement regulations for preventing accidental releases to the air of regulated substances and to minimize the consequences of releases that do occur. The regulations require regulated facilities to have in place the structural elements of a sound process safety program, and to practice, document, and communicate the elements of their program. The rule requires also that registered facilities calculate and make available worst case accidental chemical release information. The rule does not set a level of risk that a facility must achieve after it takes the required compliance steps, the level of risk a community must accept, the limit of consequences the community might suffer from a worst case chemical release, nor the specific actions a community must take in its response plan. These are issues that local communities and local officials must decide. Because the regulation involves the community in many unsettled risk issues the Wharton School initiated a project within the City Philadelphia to evaluate the proposition that productive dialogue on the implementation of the Rule and resolution of unsettled risk issues can take place in advance of a crisis occasioned by a major accidental release. This paper describes the steps taken by Wharton to bring together various stakeholders in the community to explore the implementation of the rule and the reaction of those stakeholders to be involved in such a process. It outlines some principal choices communities will have to make in order to implement 112(r) and explains some of the dilemmas associated with these choices. It describes the stakeholder‐based implementation effort being undertaken in Philadelphia in the hope that others may benefit from what has been learned there.